Egypt’s President Calls for Moderated Islam

CAIRO (BP) — Egypt’s president, in a move applauded by conservative Western media, is challenging senior Muslim clerics to reform their teachings rather than fuel extremist ideologies that have led to widespread terrorism in the name of Islam.

Abdel-Fattah al-Sisi, who was elected last spring after the overthrow of Mohammed Morsi, said in a speech at Cairo’s Al-Azhar University, a leading intellectual center of Sunni Muslim thought, that Muslim religious scholars “must take a long, hard look” at the role of Islam in violent extremism.

In a feature on al-Sisi March 20, The Wall Street Journal referred to him as “perhaps the world’s most significant advocate for Islamic moderation and reform.”

“It’s impossible to doubt the seriousness of Mr. Sisi’s opposition to Islamic extremism, or his aversion to exporting instability,” The Journal said. “In late February he ordered the bombing of Islamic State targets in neighboring Libya after ISIS decapitated 21 Egyptian Coptic Christians.

“Egypt’s security cooperation with Israel has never been closer, and Mr. Sisi has moved aggressively to close the tunnels beneath Egypt’s border with Gaza, through which Hamas has obtained its weapons,” The Journal reported.

Meanwhile, a scholar affiliated with the Southern Baptist Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission, has observed that “an alarmingly high percentage of all terrorists are professing Muslims.” The scholar, Paul David Miller, is an ERLC research fellow and associate director of the University of Texas’ Clements Center for History, Strategy and Statecraft.

Urging an ‘enlightened ideology’

Al-Sisi, in his speech to Muslim clerics and scholars at Al-Azhar in late December, noted that it is “inconceivable that the ideology we sanctify should make our entire nation a source of concern, danger, killing and destruction all over the world.”

Al-Sisi said he was referring not to religion but to ideology because “the problem has never been with our faith.” He defined ideology, in a translation of a three-minute portion of his speech circulated online, as the “body of ideas and texts that we have sanctified in the course of centuries, to the point that challenging them has become very difficult.”

Islamic ideology has become hostile to the entire world, al-Sisi said, and “it is inconceivable that 1.6 billion Muslims would kill the world’s population of 7 billion so that they could live on their own.”

The Egyptian president acknowledged that he was speaking intentionally to religious leaders and said, “You cannot see things clearly when you are locked in this ideology. You must emerge from it and look from outside in order to get closer to a truly enlightened ideology.

“You must oppose it with resolve,” al-Sisi urged. “Let me say it again: We need to revolutionize our religion.”

Al-Sisi named the grand sheik of Al-Azhar specifically, telling him he bears responsibility before Allah for what is taught at the institution. “The world in its entirety awaits your words because the Islamic nation is being torn apart, destroyed, and is heading to perdition.”

In comments to The Wall Street Journal, al-Sisi did not expect follow-through on his speech to be easy.

“The most difficult thing to do is change a religious rhetoric and bring a shift in how people are used to their religion,” he said. “Don’t imagine the results will be seen in a few months or years. Radical misconceptions [about Islam] were instilled 100 years ago. Now we can see the results.”

The real Islam, al-Sisi told The Journal through a translator, never commands its followers to kill others because they do not believe in Islam. “Never does it dictate that [Muslims] have the right to dictate [their beliefs] to the whole world,” he said.

Pulitzer prize-winning columnist George Will lauded al-Sisi’s Al-Azhar speech, which was televised in Egypt, and suggested that the nation’s president deserves a peace prize.

“As head of the Egyptian state, al-Sisi occupies an office once occupied by Anwar Sadat who was murdered by Islamic extremists for his opening to Israel,” Will said on Fox News Sunday Jan. 11. “This was an act of tremendous bravery by al-Sisi, and if the Nobel Peace Prize committee is looking for someone who plausibly deserves it, they could start there.”

CNN, in a story about the speech, said al-Sisi, a former defense minister, “has long positioned himself as a more secular option and defender against extremist views.”

As an example of his moderate stance, al-Sisi reportedly visited the main Coptic Christian cathedral in Cairo to attend Christmas mass and deliver brief remarks.

“We build our country together,” the president said, according to the CNN report on Jan. 6. “We will accommodate each other. We will love each other.”

Other media outlets from CBS News to The Washington Times took note of al-Sisi’s call to reform the version of Islam preached by clerics. The Times said he “is alone among major world leaders in his willingness to go before an audience of senior Muslim clerics and tell them that parts of Islamic ideology are indeed driving terrorists to kill worldwide.”

The newspaper also noted that al-Sisi’s message is at odds with President Obama’s view that Islam the religion has nothing to do with Muslim extremists. Obama spoke at the same university to a similar audience in 2009 and said, “Islam is not part of the problem in combating violent extremism. It is an important part of promoting peace,” The Times said.

Also among the observations reported by The Times is that al-Sisi’s speech “has received much more attention in the American conservative press than it has in the main liberal media, which are sensitive to charges of ‘Islamophobia.'”

Texas prof’s assessment

Addressing whether Islam is a terrorist religion, Miller, the ERLC research fellow and University of Texas scholar, noted in The Federalist Feb. 26: At the Obama administration’s summit at the White House on violent extremism, “all discussion of ‘Islam’ was studiously avoided.”

“It is false that jihadism has nothing to do with Islam,” Miller wrote, “but that does not mean that Islam is nothing but jihadism.”

The Islamic State is definitely Muslim, Miller said, and jihadism “most certainly has a strong, complicated, and important relationship to Islam and its future.” Islam has become entwined with the politics of countries in which it predominates, he wrote, and Islamism is the transmutation of Islam into a political ideology.

“Jihadism is a variant of Islamism. It is the effort to impose Islamist goals — however defined — by force,” Miller wrote.

But nearly all Muslims are not jihadists, he stated. “Assume ten million active jihadists worldwide — a wild exaggeration of their true numbers. That is 0.63 percent of all Muslims worldwide.”

Not all Muslims are terrorists, “but these days an alarmingly high percentage of all terrorists are professing Muslims,” Miller wrote, adding that humanity does not seem to flourish in the heartland of Islam — because of a broad pattern of tyranny, oppression, misogyny, poverty, illiteracy and a lack of religious freedom.

Reprinted from Baptist Press (www.baptistpress.com), news service of the Southern Baptist Convention.

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10 Reasons Muslims are Eager to Join ISIS

One of my students asked me why would any Muslim in his right mind join ISIL. I said to her that I can give you right away at least five reasons but if you are willing to wait till tomorrow I will come up with a longer list. ISIS, the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria, was the first name that was given to the organization since its territory was in Iraq and Syria. Their vision is far bigger than Iraq and Levant. They want to expand into Asia, Africa and Europe. The next morning I gave my students 25 reasons why Muslims are eager to join ISIL; here are 10 of them.

Success and a staying presence. Muslims see the black flag raised on expanding landmarks and they appear to be winners. Unlike foreign armies who would sooner or later leave, these people are there to stay.

Up-to-date attractive social media. Unlike the boring monologues of Ayman Zawahiri, the current leader of al Qa’eda, they use clever propaganda videos that have an appeal to the youth.

Purpose for living. So many young men and women whether in Muslim countries or in the West have no demanding or consuming purpose for living. ISIL offers young Muslims what they see as a large enough purpose for living and for dying.

America’s support for Israel. A Muslim American young man was arrested on his way to Turkey to join ISIL in Syria. His reason for wanting to join ISIL was: “Why should the taxes of American Muslims go to support Israel killing Muslims in Gaza.”

Western Societies are immoral. In spite of the abundance of church buildings in Europe and in the United States, Muslims see moral standards deteriorating rapidly as they see Americans and Europeans accepting as normal same sex marriages and people living together without being married.

Shock and Awe through decapitation. With their “shock and awe” strategy of decapitating some of their captives or burning them alive, they are aiming to intimidate not only individuals and armies but even nations. ISIL fighters are volunteers who are not afraid of death.

Influence of bridge builders. There are several famous bridge builders such as Anwar al-Awalaki who are well equipped to use the internet and can motivate and recruit disillusioned young men and women in the West to join ISIL and other radical groups.

The Shiites got inflated with power and they abused it. The Sunni majority in Iraq perceive the Shiites as syncretistic or even heretical. They would rather be ruled by the Sunni ISIL rather than by the abusing Shiites.

ISIL’s strong financial status is attractive. ISIL has a strong financial base. They have captured banks, sell oil, get taxes and get easy money in exchange for hostages. Muslims see ISIL as an organization which will keep going for a very long time and cannot be disarmed, dismantled and destroyed.

Hope for a restoration of the Caliphate. Many Muslims yearn for a day when the Caliphate will be restored and Muslims around the world will be united under one leader like Catholics are united under the Pope. Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi declared himself the Caliph of the Islamic State and called himself Caliph Ibrahim.

Do Muslims & Christians Worship the Same God?

Every language has its word for “God” which is used in translation of Scripture and within any particular culture and language. Allah is the Arabic word for the English “God” just as “Dios” is in Spanish. It is the word that has been used for centuries by Jews and Christians in the Middle East and actually pre-dates the founding of Islam in the seventh century. Bibles translated in predominantly Muslim countries into local languages such as Indonesian, Malay and Bengali use Allah as the biblical reference to the sovereign creator God.

To not use “Allah” for God would require the use of a foreign word that would not be understood in the local language. Ironically, the word “Allah” comes from the same root word of “Elohim” of the Old Testament, while our English word “God” has no etymological relationship to the biblical YHWH or Jehovah. In fact, it comes from the German “Gott” and was derived from the name of a pagan viking deity!

Use of Allah in Muslim literature refers to the God who created the world. He is the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob (and Ishmael), and other prophets known in the Old Testament. To introduce another identity than the monotheistic sovereign creator deity of the Bible and known as Allah by Muslims would create a formidable barrier to communicating biblical truth.

The concern is understandable that if “Allah” is used in Christian witness that the theological distortions of Muslim understanding will be carried over, resulting in syncretism or heretical concepts of God shaped by ones Islamic background. Certainly, this requires adequate teaching and discipling just as it does in our own culture. And we should be confident that when one comes in genuine repentance and faith to Jesus Christ that God is able to reveal Himself in spirit and truth to a new believer.

Is there more than one God? No, there is only one God, and He can be known only through Jesus Christ. We must not confuse cultural and linguistic bridges of communication in seeking to transcend diverse worldviews.

Muslims Writing About Jesus: Reza Aslan’s Zealot

Reza Aslan grew up in a nominally Muslim family in Northern California, and converted to Christianity at age thirteen. After two decades of rigorous research into the origins of Christianity he concluded he had previously been duped, and returned to Islam (xix). He now claims to be more devoted to Jesus than ever–a “committed disciple” (xx) of the “real Jesus”–not the “Jesus of faith.” Aslan thinks his portrait of Jesus, hidden behind layers of theology and centuries of interpretation, may in fact be more accurate than what the Gospels present (xxviii). His book is for the general audience with the express purpose of prying the historical Jesus away from the Christ of Christianity (120, 215-216).

Zealot shot to the top of the bestseller list due to a notorious interview on Fox News, where Lauren Green began by asking the author why a Muslim would write about Christianity’s founder. After that the discussion went downhill, recording the anchor’s ignorance (bias?) of Islam, and the author’s vigorous self-defense as scholar, who just happens to be a Muslim. Throughout the tense dialog, Aslan repeated his credentials three times: he has four degrees and is an “expert” in the history of religions. New Testament scholars would agree that he is a scholar on the history of religions, though not of early Christianity (his PhD is in sociology). But rather than question an author’s credentials, it is more helpful to discuss the contents of his work.

Having previously read the author’s No god but God, I was eager to purchase this book, but found it disturbing and unconvincing. It is poor scholarship in that the author confidently relies on outdated and untrustworthy sources. He does not seem interested in grappling with those who believe New Testament writers, like Luke, wrote with diligence and integrity. Finally, though some of the history is interesting, and the author engaging, there is little that resonates with how most Muslims see the prophet Jesus. Here, he is presented more like a failed Muhammad. A statement in the Introduction of Zealot seems to sum up the author’s own bias: “Scholars tend to see the Jesus they want to see.”

Muslims And Christians have an Image Problem

Christians and Muslims in America have an image problem. The rest of the world sees us as intolerant, belligerent, prideful, nationalistic, and extremist. As the daughter of Christian and Muslim parents, I feel like a kid stuck in a bad marriage, trying to salvage my parent’s reputation and begging them to get along. As a child I remember feeling conflicted in a home that followed two religions and suffering shame after the 1979 hostage crisis. Today I encounter this drama played out in our country.

Tragically, the Fort Hood massacre, along with 9-11 and the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, perpetuate a climate of religious polarization. It has launched a backlash against innocent Muslims and made Christians look like bullies. It’s blurred the lines between many peaceful Muslims and a few dangerous ideologues; and many caring Christians and a few conspirators who use the church for political purposes.

We can’t afford to repeat the last decade. We desperately need a new generation of American Christian and Muslim leaders, who embody our nations’ decency, to stand up and show the world that we can overcome our fury and work toward reconciliation, accountability and mutual respect. Most importantly, America needs leaders to remind the public, in a fresh and relevant way, of Jesus’ teachings to love our neighbors (even if they feel like enemies). Military containment, humanitarian work, and hard borders, however, will not be enough. We must sow seeds of trust and confidence.